


Much To Hope For

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Pre-Slash, Story: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: My dear Mr. Smith,Per our conversation of the 10th regarding the ms's unusual length, I am writing to propose that you delete the following text from Part One of "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" before printing. I am sure that whatever expense you are put to for the new typesetting will ultimately be made up by a savings in the cost of printing. It has no bearing on the story, and was included purely because my readers seem to take an interest in these mundane sitting-room conversations between us. I intend to make similar cuts to Part Two before delivering on the deadline as we agreed. I believe no actual editing will be required. You can merely delete everything between ' "It does not tell us very much does it?" he remarked, as he handed it back to me' and ' "Hardly anything." ' However, that there may be no confusion, I replicate in the enclosure the exact portion of the text that I wish to suppress.Thank you for your patience. I may say that apart from the length, there are many considerations which have induced me to make this change, and I very much appreciate your accommodating my wishes.Sincerely yours,Dr. John Watson.





	Much To Hope For

September 12, 1893

My dear Mr. Smith,

Per our conversation of the 10th regarding the ms's unusual length, I am writing to propose that you delete the following text from Part One of "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" before printing. I am sure that whatever expense you are put to for the new typesetting will ultimately be made up by a savings in the cost of printing. It has no bearing on the story, and was included purely because my readers seem to take an interest in these mundane sitting-room conversations between us. I intend to make similar cuts to Part Two before delivering on the deadline as we agreed. I believe no actual editing will be required. You can merely delete everything between ' "It does not tell us very much does it?" he remarked, as he handed it back to me' and ' "Hardly anything." ' However, that there may be no confusion, I replicate in the enclosure the exact portion of the text that I wish to suppress. 

Thank you for your patience. I may say that apart from the length, there are many considerations which have induced me to make this change, and I very much appreciate your accommodating my wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. John Watson.

******

[enclosure]

I tucked the letter back into my waistcoat pocket. Holmes pulled his dressing gown closer round him, observing my movements with keen interest.

"Well, after all, what could one expect this letter to tell us?" said. "It is a letter asking for an introduction, like thousands of others."

His bright eyes remained fixed upon my own. "He was two classes ahead of you, this 'Tadpole' Phelps?"

"Yes, but we are of an age. He was--is--brilliant, and advanced beyond his years." 

Holmes smiled, though he did not laugh. He rubbed absently, with one hand, at a new acid burn on one of his long, thin fingers. "And your success, in contrast, was achieved upon the playing fields--"

"As it happens it was, though how you have deduced it--"

"My dear Watson, neither a Jezail bullet nor enteric fever nor months of solitary dissipation in London nor years of bachelor irregularity in 221b have entirely spoiled the athletic carriage of your boyhood. However," he said, "the mystery remains: why does the sensitive and illustrious Mr. Percy Phelps, at a moment of life-threatening shame and terror, turn immediately to my old friend and colleague Dr. Watson for help?"

"There is no mystery here, Holmes," I protested. "It is your help he desires, not mine. He is evidently too ill to come to you himself--"

"Ah!" Holmes interjected. "You made the inference. Well done."

I strove to suppress the blush of pleasure that even a word of praise from him could always call forth. "After all, Holmes," I said, nonchalantly, "I know his handwriting, and clearly--"

"Oh, you know his handwriting," Holmes interrupted.

I felt myself blush, after all.

"Come come, Watson, you must know by now how many secrets such a document can yield up to me," Holmes said, nodding toward my waistcoat pocket. "Even when it was dictated to someone else. Two boys, separated by two classes, form an intimate friendship despite having almost no interests in common. Decades later, one of them writes to the other, out of the blue, and the other still knows his handwriting well enough to recognize it. Or not recognize it, as the case may be. Why?"

"Well, really, Holmes," I said, with some warmth. "What bearing can this have on the case?"

"No bearing whatsoever," he replied, with an impish grin. "Nevertheless, I warn you that, if I take up your friend's case, I will certainly also be inexorably pursuing the solution to the Mystery of The Unlikely Friendship. Unless, of course, you resolve it here and now."

His eyes sparkled with merriment, and I could not help but laugh, at his own glee and my own umbrage. After all, it was a long time ago; and Holmes was the last man in England who would think the worse of me for it.

"I suppose it was because of the flowers," I said.

Holmes's eyebrows shot up. "The flowers," he repeated.

"There was a rose-garden near the playing fields," I said. "It was a favorite project of the headmaster's wife. At the center was an old-fashioned sundial, and round it she had planted beds of roses. They would begin to bloom late in spring term. Young Phelps liked to take his school-books there and read. I chanced upon him there one day, as I was evading a Latin lesson, and we struck up a conversation. He knew all the varieties, common and Latin names, and how they were budded or grafted or--I forget the terms now, but at any rate, after play I would sometimes stop by the rose garden before we were called in to chapel, and he would be there, and we would chat about the roses."

I paused. Holmes, always attuned to the slightest nuances when a client was relating a narrative to him, leaned forward on the edge of his chair. 

"And?" he pressed.

"And one afternoon, as he was explaining to me something about the moss-rose, he broke a stem off the bush and handed it to me, so that I could see for myself the delicate spray of tiny buds clustering round the stem and the sepals. It is a natural variation, evidently; but it creates a remarkable, if subtle, effect. It is as if the stem is surrounded by a spray of droplets which gradually take on the color of the petals, so that the bloom at the end appears like Aphrodite born from the sea-foam. I didn't like to throw it away, so when I took it back to my room, I put it in the water-jug next to my bed. Well. By the time dinner was over, word had got round. To make a long story short, there were three great fifth-formers--Evans, Matthews, and Breen--who gave us some trouble after that. But it was all over in a week or two. As exams neared, Phelps and I saw rather less of each other, but--"

"Wait a moment," said Holmes, sharply. "You are eliding the most interesting part of your narrative. When you say 'it was all over'--"

"Oh, well, it was necessary to give Evans a bit of a thrashing. He was the ringleader, you know, once he was dealt with the other two melted away."

Holmes's eyebrows rose. "Evans. The great fifth-former."

"He had the weight advantage; but he had neither agility nor stamina. The first strike rendered him essentially harmless, and I did not have to press my advantage."

I had no intention of describing the altercation in any more detail than that. Judging by Holmes's expression, I had no need to.

"All this over a rose," Holmes murmured, half to himself.

"Well hang it all, Holmes," I burst out, "a man can't be afraid to cherish beauty, simply because some evil-minded lout with a coat of arms objects. You, I suppose, would have no use for a moss-rose that wasn't on the dissecting table, having been utilized in some diabolical way in the commission of some hideous and bloody crime."

A scarlet moss-rose does in fact have a sort of blood-bedewed look; but I rattled on without mentioning the fact.

"Why have we eyes, or noses--why have we senses at all, if not to apprehend beauty, in a rose or in a woman or...anywhere else? Why was beauty put into the world, if not to remind us that there are things in life that matter more than the name of one's public school or the size of one's bank account? The scent of a rose is proof, Holmes, of a truth your science of deduction can never detect. I was not much of a student; I am not much of a doctor; I hope to be a better husband and father. But ever since Phelps gave me that book of Pater's--"

Holmes's brows knit. "Pater?"

"You have  _never read Pater?_ "

"I may have. Is he a forensic chemist?"

I sprang from my chair. "Really, this is worse than the solar system. Walter Pater.  _The Renaissance._ 'To burn always, with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.'  _That_ Walter Pater."

I stopped. Holmes remained in his chair, staring at me, his lips slightly parted and his eyes bright. I was, for several moments, unsettled by both the silence that had fallen between us, and the look in Holmes's eyes, which I could not describe.

"So that's how you know his writing," said Holmes, at length.

"I beg your pardon?"

"This copy of  _The Renaissance_ that your friend 'Tadpole' presented to you, no doubt on the occasion of his leaving school. There is of course an inscription."

"There is," I said, calmly.

Holmes rose. He divested himself of his dressing-gown, tossing it upon the arm of the chair he had just left. He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and flashed an enigmatic, but cheerful, smile.

"Extraordinary," he said. "I never get your limits, Watson."

I do not know exactly why his voice brought that blush back to my cheeks.

"And Mrs. Watson, is she also a disciple of Pater's?"

I smiled. "She is of a somewhat more practical turn of mind. It's as well that one of us is. I cannot balance a ledger to save my life."

"And yet despite this difference in temperament, and despite the fact that this is the third case we have taken up together in the first six months of your marriage, there is nothing that can trouble your new-married bliss."

"Nothing," I said.

He looked at me.

"Well," I added. "Hardly anything."

THE END


End file.
